Exceptionalist naturalism: Human agency and the causal order

Turri, John

doi:10.1080/17470218.2016.1251472

Cited by 8 publications

(5 citation statements)

References 25 publications

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“…3, participants' intuitions about Chance-arguably our strongest measure of intrusion (see below for details)-were much weaker in the robot cases than in the agent cases. 21 This comports with the findings by Turri (2017c) whereby people tend to view the behavior of robots as less avoidable (i.e., more deterministic) and view the behavior as agents as more avoidable (i.e., more indeterministic). According to his findings, people tend to believe that whereas humans have the ability do otherwise (which is an important element of free will), robots largely lack this ability.…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 66%

“…For on the conditional reading, this amounts to nothing more than the fact that had the past or the laws been different, the robot could have and would have done something different. Given that Turri (2017c) found that people don't think robots have the ability do otherwise precisely because they are taken to be more deterministic, this suggests that the notion of ability people are applying in these sorts of cases is the unconditional ability.…”

Section: % 52%mentioning

confidence: 99%

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Natural Compatibilism, Indeterminism, and Intrusive Metaphysics

et al. 2020

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The claim that common sense regards free will and moral responsibility as compatible with determinism has played a central role in both analytic and experimental philosophy. In this paper, we show that evidence in favor of this "natural compatibilism" is undermined by the role that indeterministic metaphysical views play in how people construe deterministic scenarios. To demonstrate this, we reexamine two classic studies that have been used to support natural compatibilism. We find that although people give apparently compatibilist responses, this is largely explained by the fact that people import an indeterministic metaphysics into deterministic scenarios when making judgments about freedom and responsibility. We conclude that judgments based on these scenarios are not reliable evidence for natural compatibilism.

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Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 66%

Section: % 52%mentioning

confidence: 99%

Natural Compatibilism, Indeterminism, and Intrusive Metaphysics

et al. 2020

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“…We propose one explanation for the discrepant findings regarding folk compatibilism: People are motivated to uphold their beliefs in free will and moral responsibility. Most laypersons believe in free will (e.g., Sarkissian et al, 2010) and disbelieve determinism (Nichols, 2004; Nichols and Knobe, 2007; Turri, 2017b), and people tend to evaluate information in a biased manner that favors their desired beliefs (e.g., Lord et al, 1979; Kunda, 1990). Thus, people are likely to report that free will is possible regardless of experimentally imposed constraints (Feltz and Millan, 2013), particularly when desiring to uphold moral responsibility (Clark et al, 2014, 2017).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Forget the Folk: Moral Responsibility Preservation Motives and Other Conditions for Compatibilism

2019

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For years, experimental philosophers have attempted to discern whether laypeople find free will compatible with a scientifically deterministic understanding of the universe, yet no consensus has emerged. The present work provides one potential explanation for these discrepant findings: People are strongly motivated to preserve free will and moral responsibility, and thus do not have stable, logically rigorous notions of free will. Seven studies support this hypothesis by demonstrating that a variety of logically irrelevant (but motivationally relevant) features influence compatibilist judgments. In Study 1, participants who were asked to consider the possibility that our universe is deterministic were more compatibilist than those not asked to consider this possibility, suggesting that determinism poses a threat to moral responsibility, which increases compatibilist responding (thus reducing the threat). In Study 2, participants who considered concrete instances of moral behavior found compatibilist free will more sufficient for moral responsibility than participants who were asked about moral responsibility more generally. In Study 3a, the order in which participants read free will and determinism descriptions influenced their compatibilist judgments–and only when the descriptions had moral significance: Participants were more likely to report that determinism was compatible with free will than that free will was compatible with determinism. In Study 3b, participants who read the free will description first (the more compatibilist group) were particularly likely to confess that their beliefs in free will and moral responsibility and their disbelief in determinism influenced their conclusion. In Study 4, participants reduced their compatibilist beliefs after reading a passage that argued that moral responsibility could be preserved even in the absence of free will. Participants also reported that immaterial souls were compatible with scientific determinism, most strongly among immaterial soul believers (Study 5), and evaluated information about the capacities of primates in a biased manner favoring the existence of human free will (Study 6). These results suggest that people do not have one intuition about whether free will is compatible with determinism. Instead, people report that free will is compatible with determinism when desiring to uphold moral responsibility. Recommendations for future work are discussed.

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“…Incompatibilists, on the other hand, argue that compatibilist intuitions may result from people importing indeterminacy into deterministic scenarios. Recent work has revealed that most people are natural indeterminists about human agency (Knobe, 2014;Monroe, Dillon, & Malle 2014;Turri, 2017). It is therefore unsurprising that indeterminism seems to influence people's intuitions about free will in response to deterministic scenarios.…”

Section: Folk Intuitions and The Comprehension Problemmentioning

confidence: 99%

Folk Intuitions and the Failure to Comprehend Determinism

Nadelhoffer¹,

Murray

dykhuis³

2021

Preprint

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Theories of free will are often measured against how well they capture everyday intuitions about free will. But what are these everyday intuitions, and what theoretical commitments do they express? Empirical methods have delivered mixed messages. In response, some free will theorists have developed error theories to undermine the credentials of countervailing intuitions. These efforts are predicated on the idea that people might misunderstand determinism in any of several ways. This paper sheds light on the comprehension problem. We first discuss recent efforts to explain systematic errors in how people interpret determinism. Then, we present the alarming results of two new preregistered studies exploring three types of comprehension failure: (a) epiphenomenal bypassing, (b) fatalistic bypassing, and (c) indeterministic intrusion. Our findings suggest that misunderstanding runs deeper than others have supposed. This casts doubt on existing models of commonsense thinking about free will. Unless and until researchers properly control for the kinds of misunderstandings we identify, research on free will intuitions cannot shed light on whether ordinary thinking reflects commitments to compatibilism or incompatibilism.

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Exceptionalist naturalism: Human agency and the causal order

Cited by 8 publications

References 25 publications

Natural Compatibilism, Indeterminism, and Intrusive Metaphysics

Natural Compatibilism, Indeterminism, and Intrusive Metaphysics

Forget the Folk: Moral Responsibility Preservation Motives and Other Conditions for Compatibilism

Folk Intuitions and the Failure to Comprehend Determinism

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